Cinnamon Jewellery

I managed to get a couple of pairs of bronze earrings finished last week that I photographed at the weekend and I also had a custom order for some bronze stacking bangles so it definitely has been a bit of a bronze week. The bronze stud earrings above are made by melting bronze wire into pebbles then flattening the pebbles to create off-round and oval organic-looking shapes. After forming them into concave bowl shapes I tidied up the edges then paired them up and soldered them together with a fine silver ball for decoration and contrast. I oxidized these then cleaned them up a fair bit so the dark areas are just in the crevices. I also made some simple oval bronze earrings with an etched pattern and a turquoise jasper bead added to the earwires for a bit of colour. I still find bronze a bit unpredictable compared to copper where liver of sulphur is concerned but I do love the golden brown colour you get when it does behave nicely and oxidize evenly :D I a...

My recent sterling silver bangle-fest where I made quite a lot of silver bangles for hallmarking in various designs made me want to make something similar in copper. I really enjoyed making the stamped silver bangles on the right in this photo... I hadn't done any stamping for a while and it reminded me how much I like doing it. When I say stamping I mean creating patterns from mostly circle and line stamps rather than the inspiring words/phrases/childrens names that are so popular. I can't stamp letters in a straight line and making that style of jewellery has never appealed to me at all. So I stick to making patterns. I also made three copper bangles with a leaf vein texture using leaf skeletons. I used some 4mm {6g} round copper wire which I annealed then ran through the rolling mill a few times to flatten it. After annealing the flattened wire again I ran it through the rolling mill with the leaf skeletons, holding them in place with my fingers as they g...

What was supposed to be a quick half hour trip out in the car yesterday morning to post an order and pop into Tesco turned into an hour and a half and ended with me walking home........ As I turned into the car park at Tesco the car made a very loud bang and there was the smell of burning rubber. After checking under the car and staring at the engine for a bit - I had no idea what I was looking for but it seemed like the right thing to do - I ended up at the garage via a nice roadside recovery van man being asked if I'd gone over a pothole. I hadn't when it happened but all the other potholes that I hadn't managed to avoid in the past had obviously done their worst and cracked the front coil springs. I must have hit a little bump or something and the springs both snapped causing the car body to drop onto the tyres at the front. Luckily the tyres weren't damaged. I was really impressed with the service I received and the speed that everything was fixed and I n...

This is the pendant I made as a commission recently. It was a slightly different request from the custom work I've done before in that the buyer wanted me to use one of her own cabochons. She also wanted the pendant with a shiny silver finish. If you read this blog regularly you'll know that I don't normally do shiny. One reason is just that I prefer the oxidized look especially with patterned silver. The other reason is getting a smooth shiny finish on plain silver is difficult!   When the piece features a textured silver top layer and quite a few balls it's even more difficult to get a good polish on it. Getting into the crevices even with radial polishers was tricky as they caught the edge of the top textured layer and would have worn the pattern away if I hadn't stopped. But, after a lot of finishing work I did get a decent finish on it and I'm happy to say the buyer was very happy with it and it arrived in time for her birthday which was nice :D ...

I've been quite busy recently with the usual orders {bangles and findings} plus I had a custom request to make a pendant in silver using the buyers rather lovely chequer cut labradorite cabochon. I've just posted that off so will wait to hear from the buyer before I post a photo. I've got several things on the go at the moment, mainly some more copper shapes to finish so I can do a bit more enamelling with decal decoration. I also have ideas for some studs using the bronze and silver pebbles I made a few weeks ago. But in the meantime I have had a bit of time to make some embossed bronze and sterling silver studs. After deciding I don't have a lot of success using texture cards with sterling silver in the rolling mill - the results vary from a very faint pattern to ok-ish but not as deep as I'd like. However, using etched copper or brass to add pattern to silver with the rolling mill is much more successful.  I discovered I had some brass sheet that I...

Photo: Leo Reynolds on Flickr { Creative Commons } I thought I'd do an A to Z of me this time. I've seen several of these on other peoples' blogs - some funny, some very deep and meaningful....I thought I'd keep mine light ☺  A is for Andrew - the name my Mum was going to call me if I had been a boy. Spencer Tracy was a popular film star around the time I was born hence the name she chose when I turned out to be a girl. B is for Blondie. I loved Blondie when I was at school. I recently watched a documentary about the band on TV and they really were so good in their day and I love their early albums. I loved them right up until they did Rapture then The Tide Is High and that's when I stopped buying their albums. I still can't stand that song! They are still touring and have dates for this year in the UK. Photo: Kevin Dooley on Flickr { Creative Commons } C is for Chocolate! Oh how I love it {probably a little too ...